


Family Matters

by Lise



Series: Remember This Cold [38]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, Family Feels, Frigga isn't perfect but she's good, Loki's Family Issues, M/M, POV Steve Rogers, Parent Frigga, discussion of self-destructive behavior including indirect suicide, there's some pain but mostly it's sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 03:04:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10402353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/pseuds/Lise
Summary: Frigga comes to visit after the events ofCollapse the Light Into Earth. She's not exactly happy about some choices Loki made, then.Steve gets caught in the middle of a family discussion, and Loki would rather not deal with any of this.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been in the works for a long while, and I just finally got around to finishing it. It started out as an answer to a question about Frigga's thoughts during "[Collapse the Light Into Earth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4070674)" (otherwise known as Loki and Bucky's Less Than Excellent Revenge Road Trip) and spun off into thinking about her visiting in the aftermath of that incident. And then turned into being a lot about Loki and Steve's relationship in that aftermath.
> 
> I mean, that is what this verse is about. 
> 
> Thanks to [ameliarating](http://ameliarating.tumblr.com) for an astonishingly quick beta, and to you, who keep reading this verse...how many k is it now?...later.

Steve checked his watch as he fumbled for his keys and noted with relief that he was still on time –when he was late, even just by a few minutes, it sent Loki into a tailspin of worry that more often than not left him irritable and snappish for a good half hour, and Steve was too tired to be patient with that tonight. It’d been a long day of press appearances and interviews and debriefings, and he was ready to be home: eat something hot, cuddle with Loki on the couch, go to sleep at a decent hour. 

He opened the door and stepped inside only to stop before he went any further. 

The Queen of Asgard was sitting on his couch, holding a mug as delicately as if it were a crystal goblet. Across from her, Loki sat with his own mug, hunched into himself and looking almost hunted. The look Loki gave him was frantic, but Frigga spoke first. “Greetings, Steven Rogers. I was pleased to hear that you were in fact well, despite reports to the contrary.”

Steve bowed his head. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, politely, suddenly tense all over again. “I, ah…wasn’t expecting you.” He glanced at Loki, who looked intensely focused on his lap.

“No,” Frigga said serenely. “I did not announce my intentions. I feared my _son_ would run off. Again.” Loki’s shoulders hunched further and he winced visibly. Steve didn’t blame him: that tone would’ve had him begging for forgiveness. “I am sorry to have caught _you_ off guard.” Steve did not miss the emphasis. He cleared his throat. 

“Well, I. Hm. Can I offer you anything?” 

“No, thank you.” Frigga smiled at him, warmly. “Please, sit.”

“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Steve said, feeling a little guilty even as he said it for abandoning Loki. At the same time, he didn’t think his presence would make anything better. 

“You are as good as family, Steven,” Frigga said. “You could not intrude. Please. You look wearied.”

“Indeed,” Loki said quickly, beginning to rise. “Perhaps now is not the time-”

“Sit down, Loki.” Frigga’s voice turned cold at once. Loki sank back down without argument. Steve carefully maneuvered over to the chair next to him, sitting down and clearing his throat. 

“So,” he said carefully. “Um…”

“How have you been?” Frigga asked, sparing Steve having to come up with an appropriate topic of conversation. “Your recovery is proceeding well, I hope?”

“Proceeded,” Steve said, feeling more than a little awkward. “I’m basically…back in shape. I heal pretty quickly. For a human, I guess,” he added.

“Very good.” Frigga sounded approving, and Steve found himself unreasonably relieved. “I have informed both of my sons that if any of their companions should require more advanced healing, Asgard’s healers will be at your service.” 

Steve blinked. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, and remembering, corrected himself: “Frigga. I, ah, appreciate the offer.” She inclined her head gracefully and turned her gaze back to Loki.

“I am glad that you accept help so readily, Steven. It is a brave thing to be able to do.” A slight note of steel entered her voice, and Steve saw Loki’s lips thin, pressing together into a line. 

“Sometimes there is no help to be given,” he said flatly. 

“And _sometimes_ that can be assumed too quickly, as I would expect you to realize.” Steve looked back and forth between Frigga and Loki, feeling profoundly uncomfortable. 

“I _apologized,_ ” Loki burst out, sounding almost sulky. “Is that not enough for you?”

“If I recall,” Frigga said, “what you apologized for was for hurting me. For which I am grateful, but that is _hardly_ reassurance to a worried mother.” Loki threw Steve a pleading look, and Steve grimaced inwardly but spoke up. 

“I…feel like I may have missed something,” he said carefully. “And I get the impression that this isn’t just a random visit to…say hello.”

Frigga looked at Loki, who looked away, nostrils flaring. “I…while you were gone,” he said, speaking slowly. “Frigga…my mother managed to contact me. I may have…”

“You pushed me away and locked me out of your mind,” Frigga said, and under the anger Steve could hear the notes of distress. “Along with such words as to lead me to believe that I would lose you again. For a _third_ time.” Her eyes moved to Steve. “You will agree, I hope, that twice is _more_ than enough for a mother to have to mourn her son.”

“I…” Steve glanced nervously at Loki, who was staring fixedly at the floor. “I’m sorry. I really don’t think I should get in the middle of this.” Though a part of him wanted to ask Loki why he hadn’t mentioned this, if there was anything else he hadn’t mentioned, why had he pushed _everyone_ away who could help.

Frigga looked at him a moment longer, and then something in her seemed to relax. “Indeed,” she said. “You are right. I should not place you in such a difficult position between me and my son. I have been…distressed, and I allowed it to overwhelm me. Please forgive me my rudeness.”

Steve blinked. “Of course,” he said, after a beat. “Do you want me to give you some privacy?”

Loki’s head shot up, giving Steve a betrayed look, but Frigga shook her head. “No, no need. I think I have made my point.” The look she cast Loki was less angry than sad, Steve thought. “Have either of you eaten?” 

“Not yet,” Steve said, at the same time Loki rather sullenly said, “I am not hungry.” 

He glanced at Steve, and said, “I shall fetch something from the kitchen.” 

This time Frigga let him go. Steve tried to catch his eye and smile on the way out, but Loki avoided his gaze, set of his shoulders defensive. Steve looked back at Frigga and cleared his throat. “So…you’re well? And your husband?” 

Something like amusement touched the edges of Frigga’s faintly exasperated expression – remarkably like Loki’s, Steve noticed. “I am well, yes, as is Odin.” She glanced toward the kitchen. “Though he gave us quite a fright.”

Steve looked down, a mixture of embarrassed and guilty. By some measures, after all, it could be considered his fault that Loki’d…done what he’d done. “I can imagine,” he mumbled. 

Frigga glanced at him. “I suppose you know by now that Loki feels things…intensely. Some would say too much. He loves the same: when he gives his heart he surrenders the whole of it. It is not…necessarily an ill thing. But it means when he turns to despair…” 

Steve flinched, thinking of the wild, desperate pain on Loki’s face when he’d found him and Bucky in Naples. He swallowed hard. “I know.”

“But now…is he well?” Frigga asked. Steve glanced at her, surprised she had to ask. “I know how he seems,” she said. “But not necessarily how he is.” 

Steve thought about that. Brittle, he thought. Nervous, and anxious, and sometimes prone to hovering. His mood swung often and without warning from melancholy to playful to affectionate. At the same time, though…he didn’t want to say too much on Loki’s behalf.

“He’ll be all right,” Steve said slowly. “He’s…better than he was.” 

“I would appreciate it,” Loki said stiffly, “if you would refrain from discussing me behind my back.”

Steve almost jumped a foot in the air. He did wince, turning quickly to look at Loki, who held out a plate of leftover lasagna to him, expression bland. “I’m sorry,” he said honestly. “I shouldn’t…”

Loki shook his head, lips twisting briefly. “I suppose I should not be _surprised_ that you should want an outside opinion,” he said to Frigga, voice a little waspish. “As of course you could not trust _mine_ on the subject of my own mind.”

“Loki,” Frigga said reproachfully, but Loki gave her a sharp look and she stopped, glancing down. 

“We’re just worried about you,” Steve said carefully.

“You should worry more about yourself.” Loki’s voice was a little tart. Steve did not let himself wince and just gave Loki a steady look. After a moment his lips twisted and he glanced away. “I am fine. I do not know how many times I need say it. Steve is alive. And my pursuit of vengeance is finished. Why keep dwelling on this?” 

Frigga’s lips pressed together and Steve wondered if she was thinking the same thing that haunted him: _and what if he wasn’t alive?_ “I _dwell,_ as you say, because it concerns me that you would yet push aside my help when you are in need.”

Steve saw Loki’s hackles rising and moved, reaching out to put a hand on his arm. “I don’t think this is a good time for an argument,” he said quickly, before Loki could respond. Loki gave him a startled look, like he wouldn’t have expected Steve to take his part. He tried not to let that sting.

“No,” Frigga said after a long moment, though her voice was still taut. “I suppose it is not.” She stood, setting her mug down too gently. “Your friend Tony Stark has graciously offered me accommodations at his home. I expect we shall talk further tomorrow.” 

“Is that a command from the All-Mother?” Loki asked, his voice brittle. 

“No,” Frigga said after a moment. “Only a request.” But her voice was still hard. Steve would not want that tone directed at him. 

She vanished, between one moment and the next, the light twisting around her for a moment before she went. So Loki wasn’t the only one who knew how to do that. 

The moment Frigga was gone Loki pulled away from him, stalking stiff-legged to pick up Frigga’s mug and take it, and his, over to the sink. He poured out the contents and began washing them, movements stiff and jerky, shoulders almost up by his ears. 

“Loki,” Steve said quietly. 

“Thank you,” he said, though he didn’t sound very grateful. “For stepping forward.”

“You’re welcome.” Steve frowned at Loki’s back. “Can you stop washing up and look at me?” 

He didn’t, at first, but after a few seconds Loki turned the water off and turned. His entire posture was like a quivering tripwire just on the verge of triggering. “Yes?”

Steve kept his voice calm by an effort of will. “Are you okay?” 

“Fine,” Loki snapped. “ _Just_ fine. I am getting very tired of that question. No one believes me when I say it, anyway.”

Steve refrained, carefully, from rubbing his temples. “I’m sorry for talking about you behind your back.” 

“You needn’t apologize,” Loki said tightly. 

“You’re acting like you’re angry with me.”

Loki jerked his head to the side. “I am not. Though I suppose you will not believe that, either.”

Steve exhaled harshly through his nose. “Why are you being so-”

“Difficult?” Loki broke in, an edge on his voice. Steve shook his head. 

“Defensive,” he said. “You’re acting like - she’s just worried about you. Is that a bad thing?” 

Loki pressed his lips together. “Maybe.” Steve blinked, surprised. 

“Why?” 

“Because-” Loki grimaced. “I do not know how to explain it. It is - it does not feel _real,_ her...concern.” Steve frowned, but Loki shook his head. “No, that isn’t quite it. It is…” He sighed, falling quiet for several moments. Steve was about to press him when he said, quieter, “I do not like the way it makes me feel, her worry.”

“What do you mean?” Steve asked carefully. Loki half closed his eyes. 

“Brittle,” he said. “Raw. Aware of my own edges.”

“Oh,” Steve said. He looked at Loki, biting his lip. 

“Do not apologize,” Loki said, even as Steve was thinking about doing so. “It isn’t your fault. I am always a creature assembled from jagged pieces, never fitting together quite right. Only sometimes I feel it more than others.” He sighed. “I know I am being...unfair. She means well, and I would deserve the sharp side of her tongue - which she has not seen fit to give me. Only I do not want her cut on my own sharp edges. Or to wind up cutting myself.” 

Steve moved over and pulled Loki into a hug. It was still a relief to do that, for more than one reason. “You don’t give yourself enough credit.” 

He could almost hear Loki’s frown. “Credit for what?” 

“For keeping yourself together. For your ability to not hurt people.”

Loki scoffed. “You of all people should know that is not one of my talents. I should say any number of others, most of them now deceased, would agree.” 

Steve tried not to wince and pulled back just enough to look Loki in the eye. “I don’t mean you can’t, or haven’t, or won’t,” Steve said. “I just mean that…” He sighed. “You don’t lash out half as much as you used to. It’s not _good_ that you keep things from me, but I know most of the time you do it trying to spare me pain. The fact is, for the most part when you don’t want to hurt people, you don’t.”

Loki shook his head, frowning. He opened his mouth, and then closed it. Steve fixed him with an even look. 

“You have this story you tell yourself,” he said. “About how you ruin everything you touch and leave destruction in your wake, but it’s not _true._ Bad things have happened, and you’ve done bad things, but that’s not all there is.” He took a deep breath. “If that were true...I might as well assume the same thing about me. Not like I haven’t left my own share of dead people behind.” 

_Including my friends._ And he had wondered, sometimes, if it wasn’t something about him. But Bucky was alive. His biggest failure, and he had a second chance. He’d managed to save Loki, too. If he wanted Loki to believe him...he had to try to believe it about himself. 

Loki’s lips twisted in an odd expression. “I hurt Frigga. That is why she is here.” 

“You scared her,” Steve said. _Scared me._ “Not quite the same thing.”

Loki dropped his head forward on Steve’s shoulder and pulled him in close again. “Ah, Steve,” he said. “You are a kindness.” 

“She just wants the same thing I do,” Steve said, into Loki’s neck, taking a deep breath of his smell. “To know that you’re safe. That you’ll stay that way.” _No matter what happens to me._

Loki exhaled slowly. “I cannot promise her that. Or you.” 

Steve closed his eyes. “I don’t think she needs a promise. Just to see you. Talk to you.”

“And an apology.” 

Steve stifled a laugh at the disgruntled tone of Loki’s voice. “Couldn’t hurt.” Loki was quiet for several long moments. 

“And you?” He said at length. “What do you need from me, Steve? Do you need a promise?”

“If you could give me one,” Steve said. “But I know you don’t feel like you can. I’m not the only one in your life anymore, you know.”

“No,” Loki said, “but you are the greater part of it.”

Steve grimaced. Maybe that should give him joy. Right now, though, in this...it just hurt. 

“Could you promise me, if I died, that you would not feel responsible?” Loki said, after a brief quiet. “That you would not flagellate yourself with guilt that you could not stop it? That you would not seek to punish yourself in deed and thought until exhaustion caught you up - or worse?” 

Steve didn’t pull away, but he flinched. It was...in some ways it was a painfully accurate summation of what he’d done after Bucky’s fall. “You wouldn’t want me to,” he said. 

“No,” Loki agreed. “I wouldn’t. But that wouldn’t stop you, I do not think.”

Maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe he’d be able to do like he had before and find enough responsibilities, things to do, to keep himself afloat. He did have those - the Avengers, Bucky. 

He needed to work harder at making sure Loki built those connections. He and Bucky had something, and things with Thor were better but still fragile. If he could work on making sure a bridge built between Loki and Sam, find a way to build a web that would catch Loki if Steve wasn’t there…

“Can you promise to try?” He said, hearing the pleading in his voice. “If something happens to me - to take a half a year, a year, and try to live?”

“Nothing is going to happen to you,” Loki said, too lightly. “I will not permit it.”

“Loki,” Steve said, and Loki sighed. 

“I can...promise to try. If it will set your mind at ease.”

Steve’s eyes stung, embarrassingly. Maybe it was a lingering aftereffect of...everything that had happened. He still felt a little raw and vulnerable himself. “Thank you,” he said, meaning it. One of Loki’s hands came up and clasped the back of his neck, a warm and intimate gesture that seemed to mean something to him. 

“I’ll talk to her,” Loki said after a long moment. “I shall even apologize. But I reserve the right to come home and hold you for a while.”

“You don’t need to reserve that,” Steve murmured. “It’s already yours.” He tangled his fingers in Loki’s shirt. “You’re not the only one who needs some of that right now,” he added, even more quietly. 

“It is hardly a hardship to give.” Loki pulled back and tipped Steve’s chin up slightly for a kiss. His eyes were soft, more grey than green right now. “I love you.”

“And I you,” Steve mimicked, and he felt the soft vibration of Loki’s laugh in his chest. 

* * *

Loki met Frigga out of the apartment. Steve invited Sam over, not much wanting to be alone, but after a few hours he had to take off to return to DC - he’d taken as many vacation days as he could spare already. Loki wasn’t home by early afternoon, and Steve had just started to get really worried when he returned with a small frown on his face, alone. 

“How’d it go?” Steve asked, trying not to sound worried. Loki made a sort of “hmm” sound in the back of his throat, and Steve made himself smile. “That bad?” 

“No,” Loki said slowly. “Actually...not.” He shook his head. “She...apologized for surprising me. For, as she put it, intruding on my home. Not...respecting my boundaries.”

Steve blinked. “Oh?” he said slowly. 

“Yes,” Loki said. “She said she realized that...she had expressed her worry as anger. And that she was sorry for doing so.” Loki shook his head slowly. “I...apologized for worrying her, and she said I was forgiven. As simple as that.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Steve said. 

“I suppose it is.” Loki didn’t sound quite certain. “I thought...I do not know exactly what I expected. That it would be harder. I certainly did not expect her to apologize to _me._ ”

“It did bother you,” Steve said. “Being surprised. You don’t like people intruding on you at all. And her being angry with you...I know that’s...not easy.” _Scares you,_ he’d been about to say, but he doubted Loki wanted to hear it. 

“I know,” Loki said softly. “But I am not used to...having that acknowledged, especially when I’ve brought it on myself by some wrong done first.” 

“It sounds like she’s trying to do better by you,” Steve said. Loki nodded, slowly, though he still looked uncertain.

“She has to go back,” he said, after a long pause. “She said to give you her love.” 

Steve blinked. “Her-?”

“She thinks very highly of you,” Loki said with a very small smile. “As well she should. You deserve it.” 

Steve shook his head a little. “Makes me wish you could meet my ma,” he said, and then was a little surprised he had. Even after all these years, thinking of her still brought a dull pang. 

Loki let out a little _ha._ “I am sure the good Sarah Rogers would hardly approve of me for her son.”

Steve pictured Loki meeting his mother in some cramped tenement building. Loki’d sweep a bow and kiss her hand and deliver one of those lines that were built to win smiles. “Nah,” he said. “You’d charm her for sure.” 

“I would certainly want to,” Loki said, and for all his voice was teasing his expression was serious. Steve shook off the brief ache of wishful thinking.

“You said something about-” He coughed a little, face warming. “‘Holding me for a while’?”

“So I did,” Loki said with a quirk of his lips. “So I did.”


End file.
